Group wants city to ban synthetic drugs

Impact Futures project director Laviza Matthews shows an Above the Influence banner created by area high school students. Impact Futures, a 501(c)3 nonprofit group, works to keep area youth away from drugs.

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Her 19-year-old son tried synthetic marijuana, known as “K2,” and he ended up in the emergency room covered in his own vomit and urine, she said. A toxin screen came back negative, she said.

Laviza Matthews, the project director of Impact Futures, and other concerned citizens proposed a city ordinance before the mayor and city commisioners on Jan. 30. The measure would ban the sale and possession of synthetic drugs disguised as herbal incense with names like K2, spice, G-4 and bath salts.

“This stuff makes you crazy. It’s not just the physical stuff like your heart rate is elevated, your respiratory rate is elevated but it creates hallucinations where people beat their animals, skin their cats, murder people, try and take babies,” Matthews said.

Impact Futures is a 501(c)3 nonprofit group dedicated to reducing substance abuse among teens. The group is under the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. They are funded by a federal Drug Free Communities grant, she said.

“The way we have seen it, they just get a big old table,” she said, describing the substances’ manufacture. “It might be dried flowers, dried leaves, it could be dried grass,” she said. “They just spread it out on the table and they spray it with whichever chemical.”

These synthetic cannabinoids effect the CB1 receptors of the brain, she said.

The proposed ordinance would be similar to a plan approved by Lubbock’s city council on Jan. 31, she said.

The Lubbuck ordinance, which was approved with a 6-0 vote on its first reading, would ban the chemicals HU-308, JWH-133, Win-35, 428 and L-759, 633 and similar substances. The ordinance also bans Salvia and any controlled substance analogues that create the same effects as illicit substances.

“These chemists who are creating it go in and they change one of the molecular components of it and then they’ve got a whole new chemical,” she said. “You can keep on banning and banning and banning, but that’s not an effective way to do it.”

A draft of the proposed ordinance had some problems, Matthews said.

She passed the ordinance on to the city attorney Marcus Norris.

Norris said the city commission is concerned about synthetic drugs, but whatever they do, they want it to be effective.

He said state and federal officials have tried to regulate synthetic drugs, and a city ordinance that mimics a state or federal law is frowned upon.

“We don’t need two sets of laws declaring the same thing illegal,” he said. “If there is a gap in state or federal law, that opens a window of opportunity.”

Norris said the city commission thinks a state law is what is needed.

“All we’re going to do is create a huge headache for the counties or the next town down the road,” he said.

Law enforcement officials also are experiencing complications with synthetic drugs.

Sgt. Brent Barbee said there is no field test available to see whether a product contains one of the substances.

“Prosecutors prefer that a substance be tested and shown to be a controlled substance before they present a case,” he said.

Potter County Sheriff Brian Thomas said it could take a lab nine to 12 months to process results.

“The majority of it was because the citizens of Randall, Canyon and Amarillo started an uproar about it,” he said. “We eventually got to the point where we were confident enough to run search warrants and put a stop to this stuff.”

Randall County Criminal District Attorney James Farren has filed a case against Paul Glen Woodrell, owner of the Green Gorilla Smoke Shop, 3300 S. Washington St., after an April 17 search of the store.

He said Woodrell and others sell the synthetic drugs for the same reason people sell heroin or marijuana.

“They are willing to violate the law in order to make money by selling poison to your children,” he said. Woodrell is charged with possession with intent to deliver the illegal chemicals, Farren said.

He said Randall County sends samples to private labs in order to expedite the process.

“We’re not going to let people deal drugs in the community because it’s expensive,” he said.

Woodrell could not be reached to comment, and phone calls to his lawyer were not returned.

Repeated attempts to speak with owners and employees of area smoke shops failed. An employee of From Rags 2 Riches smoke shop at 811 N. Hughes St. shooed reporters away, claiming they did not sell the illegal products, but would not comment further.

Fast facts

A yearly survey of anonymous, self-reporting 6th- to 12th-graders in Amarillo.

Use among high School students in the past 30 days:

■ 14 percent of Amarillo ninth graders admit to using synthetic drugs

■ 16 percent of Amarillo 10th graders admit to using synthetic drugs

■ 20 percent of Amarillo 11th graders admit to using synthetic drugs

■ 17 percent of Amarillo 12th graders admit to using synthetic drugs

■ Almost one out of every three high school juniors reported they have used synthetic drugs in the past year. That number roughly equates to the number of graduates from each of Amarillo’s high schools.